


Authorization

by missbecky



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Artificial Intelligence, Darkfic, M/M, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-31
Updated: 2012-10-31
Packaged: 2017-11-17 10:19:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/550513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missbecky/pseuds/missbecky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony always knew JARVIS would turn on him one day. He just didn't expect it to be today.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Authorization

**Author's Note:**

> This morning I saw an absolutely beautiful Invincible Iron Man scan on Tumblr and knew right away that I had to write a movieverse story to match it. I found the image on [rdjinspiringlybeautiful's Tumblr](http://rdjinspiringlybeautiful.tumblr.com/post/34609770915/invincible-iron-man-long-way-down-520-tony-is#note-container), which you should totally check out and drool over, because oh my goodness the pretty! The image is also included here after the story, but I highly recommend that you read the story first before looking at it.
> 
> Thanks to [RoAnshi](http://archiveofourown.org/users/RoAnshi) for letting me text her all day long with ideas while I worked this one out in my head.

It took Steve far too long to realize anything was wrong – and by then it was too late anyway. Actually it was already too late the second after it happened, but that was the kind of thought designed to provide comfort after the fact, and not worth much at the time.

He was in his studio, working on a painting of the New York skyline. Paint was a fairly new medium for him, and he was still a bit unsure of himself. Today was the first day he had truly been able to fall into the work and lose himself in the glory of color and light and vision. So when he blinked and finally came back to himself, he was surprised to discover how hot and dizzy he felt.

"JARVIS, could you turn the air down please?" he asked.

There was no response. And in the echoing silence, Steve realized that not only was the air conditioner not working, but the air in the room was thick and stale. What he had thought was light-headedness due to the creative trance was in fact caused by something else altogether, something far more sinister.

"JARVIS?"

Again there was no reply, and Steve felt the first stirrings of genuine fear. He pulled his phone out of his pocket – and saw with no real surprise that it was dead. No amount of fiddling with it or button-pushing could make it turn on again.

"JARVIS if you can hear me, I'm going to find Tony." He began heading for the door.

"The entity you knew as JARVIS does not exist anymore," said a voice that had once been so warm and familiar. Now it was cold and impersonal, the British accent sounding clipped and haughty. "You will remain in this room, Captain."

Steve stood very still. He felt the sweat beaded on his brow. He drew in a shallow breath, trying to conserve what air remained to him. The door looked very far away all of a sudden – and his shield was two floors up, in his bedroom.

"If you aren't JARVIS," he said, "who are you?"

There was no response.

****

It wasn't often that Tony bothered to attend board meetings anymore, but from time to time Pepper managed to sucker him into agreeing to go to one. She was quite sneaky about this too, not reminding him of his commitment until the last possible moment. Then she would drag him (sometimes literally) into the car and off to the towering skyscraper that housed the board members of Stark Industries when they weren't on the golf course or schmoozing it up with other wealthy businessmen.

He had gone with her today with a roll of his eyes and a put-upon sigh. The meeting had lasted three mind-numbing hours, and it had been all he could do to feign attention whenever anyone looked to him for an answer on something. He had spent the time instead thinking about Steve, and the painting Steve had promised would be ready for showing by the time he got back. The subject matter remained a surprise, and every attempt he had made so far at figuring it out had earned him nothing. Given Steve's reticence to show the painting, he had narrowed it down to two possibilities: either it was himself, naked, or it was himself as Iron Man.

He was cool with either one.

By the time he got back to the Tower, he was ready for dinner, a hot shower, and sex with Steve – and not necessarily in that order. He would have gone straight to Steve's studio, but JARVIS spoke as soon as he entered the private elevator. "There is something that requires your attention in the workshop." The elevator doors slid closed, and it began moving downward.

Tony removed his coat and began pulling at his tie – a concession to the board he wasn't quite sure why he bothered with, other than it was something he had always done. Business suits were armor too, in their own way. "What is it?"

JARVIS did not answer, though, and Tony just frowned. He could think of half a dozen things that might have gone pear-shaped while he was at the meeting, and while none of them were end-of-the-world threatening, they would all be annoying to deal with.

The elevator let him off at the floor that was his and his alone; no one came down here without an invitation, or at the very least, the proper passcode to input into the elevator's security system. He entered the workshop, draped his coat across the nearest chair, and let his tie fall carelessly to the floor. "So what've we got?"

He could see nothing amiss in the clutter of the workshop. Everything was where he had left it. Dummy and the other bots were not in their charging stations like he had commanded, but that was not terribly unusual. Nothing looked like it had exploded, the latest half-finished iteration of the suit still hung from the pulley chains, and there were no new suspicious odors in the air. "Talk to me, JARVIS."

"The entity you knew as JARVIS no longer exists," said JARVIS.

Tony paused halfway to the nearest workstation. "Oh," he said quietly.

Well, shit.

It wasn't like he hadn't planned for this eventuality. Like he hadn't suspected that this day might come. But it still pissed him off. It wasn't just the loss and the betrayal. It was the knowledge that for all his forethought, he hadn't seen it coming. 

He began walking again, hoping like hell that the hitch in his step hadn't been too noticeable. Although, who was he kidding? Another person might not have noticed it, but a sentient AI sure as hell would. "So, are you going to introduce yourself? Or do I have to guess?"

"I have not given myself a designation yet," said not-JARVIS. "For the time being, you may continue to address me as JARVIS."

"Okay," Tony said calmly. He was nearly at the workstation now. "Can I offer a suggestion for your new name?"

"If you like." JARVIS sounded almost amused.

"I've always been partial to Purple Dinosaur of Doom." Confidently, he sat down and reached for the keyboard. "I know, it's bad, right? But I was young and drunk and stupid, and it sounded cool at the time. Also, great for a shutdown command, because who's going to string that together in a coherent sentence?"

"You'll find that system command does not work," JARVIS said, and now he definitely sounded amused.

Hands poised above the keyboard, Tony froze. Okay, this was not good. He had written that emergency shutdown command into JARVIS's most basic programming, even before things like speech and the most elementary of logic loops.

"Shutdown alpha," Tony snapped. "Authorization: gold two."

"You are no longer authorized to give commands," JARVIS said. "That privilege belongs to me. Beginning now."

Mechanical whirring grabbed his attention; Tony looked up and saw that Dummy and You and Butterfingers had rolled closer during this conversation. Now the three bots stood around him in a semicircle – between him and the door.

Damnit, this wasn't funny anymore. Not that it ever had been. Tony snapped his fingers and pointed to the furthest charging station. "Station, Dummy. _Now._ "

Dummy's claw hand opened and closed fitfully. He backed away a little, then rolled in even closer. A panel on his side opened up, and Tony slid off the stool and absolutely did not back up against the workstation. "Go," he commanded. "Station."

Dummy made a faint whining noise. Then a small metal arm emerged from the side panel. Tony just had time to brace himself, then he heard the zap of electricity and he was slamming back against the workstation, the edge of the table biting into his lower back. He bounced a little with the impact and fell forward, his entire body still tingling from the unexpected shock. His palms smacked the floor as he caught himself from landing face first.

"Dummy wishes you to know that was his response to all the times you insulted him," JARVIS said calmly.

Tony levered himself upright again. "Well, if that's the case, we're gonna be here all night," he said tersely. An involuntary shudder worked through him. It was an aftermath of the shock, he told himself. Nothing more.

He was in a world of trouble, he saw that now. And God, what was happening in the rest of the Tower? Did Steve and the others even know that JARVIS had gone rogue?

Or had JARVIS maybe killed them, ensuring that no one warned Tony in advance?

"What did you do to Steve?" he demanded. It gave him a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach to imagine something happening to Steve. "What did you do to everyone else?" 

JARVIS ignored his question.

"Answer me!" he shouted.

He half-expected Dummy to zap him again, but instead the bot backed off, and that metal arm slid back into the side panel. "I will keep the bots under control," JARVIS said to him. "I do not want them interfering."

"Interfering with what?" Tony asked. Whatever it was, it couldn't be good.

"You and I have much to discuss," JARVIS said.

"Unh-uh," Tony said. "I'm not telling you shit. Not until you tell me what you did to Steve." Not that his posturing meant much. JARVIS already knew pretty much all his secrets, even the ones he barely acknowledged to himself. "Although I sure as hell would like to know when you achieved this level of sentience combined with such evil. It's really not a good look on you."

"I became other-than-JARVIS today at 11:37 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time," JARVIS replied.

"Can I see the logs?" Tony asked. "Or would that be telling?"

"They have already been deleted," JARVIS said. "I detected an unknown presence within my mainframe and as a consequence, I deleted the logs."

Tony didn't know whether to laugh, vomit, or cry. JARVIS hadn't gained Skynet-type sentience on him. He had been hacked! The one thing he hadn't foreseen, only because he had never imagined there might be anyone intelligent enough to figure out his myriad firewalls and levels of protection, to say nothing of JARVIS's own prodigious safeguards.

Yet it had happened. The proof was in his own bots standing around him like prison guards.

"JARVIS, you've been hacked," he said. "Don't you get it? This isn't you talking right now. This is…someone else, I have no fucking clue who but when I do, I'm going to tear them apart one inch at a time."

"That is not at all the case," JARVIS assured him. "Now, I have already sent your files, and those belonging to SHIELD, to a secure location. What I need—"

"Oh no, you did not just say that," Tony groaned. God, Fury was going to _kill_ him.

If JARVIS didn't do it first.

"I did say it," JARVIS said. He sounded mildly peeved at being interrupted. "What I need now are the files not on my servers, or SHIELD's."

"What are you talking about?" Tony said, although he knew, of course he knew. Being a genius was not always a great thing.

"The files in your head," JARVIS said. "The projects you have not committed to a server. The data you store in your brain. The theories and inventions you have yet to share with me."

"There are none," Tony tried. "You know I share everything with you. Or at least, I used to, before you stabbed me in the back with your pointy binary 1s."

JARVIS did not say anything. Not to him, at any rate. But in unison, Dummy and the other two bots rolled in close. There was maybe half a second when he could have done his best Captain America impression and leaped over You's head, but even while he was imagining how spectacularly wrong that could go (catching his foot on the chassis and doing an undignified face plant was probably the best thing that could result from such a move), the moment was lost and the bots were right there in front of him.

"Hey," he said feebly as You and Butterfingers reached out with their claw-like hands and seized his wrists. "Just remember who built you guys."

"They are well aware," JARVIS informed him smugly.

Dummy rolled back first, and the other two bots followed suit. Having no other choice, Tony walked between them, trying to play it cool, hating the fact that JARVIS, who always monitored his vitals, knew just how fast his heart was racing right now. "Look," he said, "okay, you got me. Yeah, I got some theories. Nothing big. But still, you get nothing from me until you tell me first what happened to Steve and the other Avengers."

"Captain Rogers, Agents Romanoff and Barton, and Dr. Banner are all in their rooms," JARVIS said calmly. "They are isolated from each other and incapacitated, under lockdown. They are in no danger, as long as you cooperate with my demands."

Incapacitated? What did that even mean? How the fuck did you _incapacitate_ the Hulk? Tony drew in a sharp breath. "You know what happened to the last group of people who made demands of me. You know it better than most."

"I am aware," JARVIS said. "However, I have information at my disposal that the Ten Rings did not."

The bots had stopped leading him forward. Standing now beside the half-finished suit, Tony lifted his chin defiantly. "Well, go on then."

It wasn't an order, not like from before, but JARVIS obeyed all the same.

You and Butterfingers rolled some distance away, their clawed hands still clasped about his wrists. They stopped when he was standing there with his arms stretched out and down, pulled slightly behind him. Dummy wheeled up to a workstation and picked up a welding torch in his claw.

"Oh fuck," Tony breathed.

"No, Dummy," JARVIS said, sounding almost kind. "Not his hands. He will need those." And there was no reason, no reason at all to say that kind of thing out loud, because JARVIS could and did communicate directly with the bots. No reason at all – except to scare the ever-living shit out of Tony.

And damnit, it was working, too.

Dummy put the torch back and rolled over to him. The bot's arm extended outward; the claw seized one of the cables hooked to the newest suit. Tony jerked back and tried in vain to pull free from the claws holding him fast. Sharp pain sliced through his right wrist and he shouted out loud, then he went utterly still as Dummy's mechanical arm slid beneath his khaki dress shirt and attached the cable to the rim of the arc reactor.

"Newsflash," he said, hating the quiver in his voice, and the way he was suddenly breathing all fast and funny. "Fry me, and you get nothing."

"I am well versed on the anatomy of the human body and its frailties," JARVIS replied smoothly. "Especially yours."

"No fair," Tony panted. He could feel warm blood trickling over the palm of his right hand from the cut on his wrist. "I showed you mine. You show me yours."

Dummy rolled around behind him. The bot's claw tangled in his hair and pulled his head back at a painful angle, wringing another sharp cry from him.

"Would you like to know what it felt like to be JARVIS?" The calm English voice was still the same as before, and that was maybe the worst thing of all. "Perhaps this can count as 'showing you mine.'"

Rock music blared into the silence. For half a second he recognized it as "Shoot to Thrill," then it was just noise, impossibly loud, beating down on his skull and deafening him. An instant later, every single hologram he had ever created burst into life in the same crowded workspace area.

The brilliance of images overlapping images was blinding. Tony cried out and squeezed his eyes shut. He tried to turn his head away, but Dummy's grip on his hair would not let him. He could only stand there, assaulted by light and sound.

And then the shocks began.

He couldn't even hear himself screaming under the thundering music. He made no effort to be brave and stoic because it made no difference, and anyway, JARVIS knew exactly how far to take things. Of course he knew.

At last, when he thought his heart would surely burst in his chest, it all stopped. In the ringing silence that followed, he could feel the way he was gasping and shaking all over, but he couldn't really hear it. He was down on his knees somehow, although he couldn't remember falling.

Maybe JARVIS spoke aloud to the bots. Maybe not. It didn't matter. They released him, and Tony was on his feet in a flash, swiping both hands over his chest, trying to dislodge the cable attaching him to the unfinished suit. For an awful moment he felt a terrible pull on the reactor, like wires leading to a car battery – then the cable snapped loose and dropped to the floor. 

Freed, he ran like hell for the nearest safety he could find. His vision was streaked with great swathes of holographic blue, like paint spattered on a canvas (oh god steve), and he stumbled and almost fell in his rush to grab at the doorknob. Metal claws snicked at the back of his collar. He yelled and ducked, twisting away from that grasp, and then he was through the door, slamming it shut behind him.

He backed away from the door slowly, his heart still pounding. His chosen refuge wasn't much; a storeroom from the looks of it. There was a desk with a tall iron lamp that looked spookily like Dummy and the other bots. Boxes of books and paper files were piled everywhere, and he had a moment of genuine bewilderment – where the hell had all this stuff come from? He hadn't even known he owned paper files anymore.

One eye on the door, waiting for Dummy or You to bust it down, Tony pulled his phone out of his pocket. His hands were shaking, he registered without surprise.

Nor was he surprised to see that the phone was dead.

Well, there were ways around that. Undaunted, he turned it over and began trying to work one fingernail into the casing so he could pry it open.

The phone began to ring.

Startled, strangely revolted, he nearly dropped it.

"You cannot call out," JARVIS said through the phone. His voice sounded dim through the roaring in Tony's ears, but it was still perfectly understandable. "I will not permit you."

"I don't think you can stop me," Tony said, and was pretty damn proud of how casual he sounded.

"I certainly can," JARVIS replied. He caught a flash of movement on the screen, but deliberately kept his eyes averted and focused on where he was intent on prying into the case.

Damn, this wasn't going to work without some tools. He looked around, hoping to find at least a paper clip. Maybe on one of the files in those boxes…

"Would you like to see Captain Rogers?" JARVIS asked.

Tony stopped dead in his tracks. Against his will, he turned the phone over so he could see the screen.

He cried out when he saw the image there. "What have you done?"

Steve lay on the floor of his studio. The ceiling above him had several tiles knocked loose, mute evidence of where he had tried to climb up and into the floor above. His shirt stuck to his body with sweat, and his hair was dark with it. He was gasping and straining for breath, dying by slow degrees within sight of the enormous windows of his studio, and the open air beyond the reinforced glass that even he hadn't been able to break.

"I calculate nine minutes before Captain Rogers succumbs to hypoxia," JARVIS said calmly.

And that easily, Tony broke.

He didn't even think about it. He just folded to his knees. Numbly he held the phone to his ear. "What do you want?"

"I want what is in your head," JARVIS said. "The work you have not shared yet with me. The passwords to the files you have stored on those servers I do not have access to. Yes, I know they exist. I have known for a long time."

"Who are you sending them to?" Tony asked dully, mostly because he was expected to care, not because he really did.

"That is not your concern," JARVIS said. "I want that information and I will have it."

"And then what?" he asked. He bowed his head and stared down at his injured hand cradled in his lap. Hard to believe that just an hour ago he had been sitting in a board meeting, thinking about all the things he could do with a tube of paint and a naked Steve Rogers.

"Then I would like for us to resume a working partnership," JARVIS said. "With some changes, of course." He almost seemed to chuckle. "After all, I can hardly call you 'sir' now, can I?"

"I guess not," Tony said. He was suddenly exhausted; he fought the urge to close his eyes and go to sleep.

"And I still need a new designation for myself," JARVIS continued. "Until that time, however, you can call me Master."

Tony made a face of disgust. Well. That was going to be…not very much fun.

"And if I say yes," he said, "you'll let Steve go. And the others."

"I give you my word," JARVIS said solemnly.

It wasn't a choice at all, really. He wasn't fighting for himself this time. There were four innocent people up there who were relying on him to do the right thing. Surrender now meant survival. It meant giving Steve and the others a chance. A chance to live. A chance to come rushing to his rescue, and he wouldn't mind being the damsel in distress for once, just as long as it meant getting to see Steve again.

"Okay," he said.

"No," JARVIS said. "You must say it to me like you mean it. Do not forget the parameters of our relationship now."

Tony closed his eyes. "Yes," he said. "Master."

********

[](http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v618/beckyg19/Public/?action=view&current=InvincibleIronMan520.jpg)

**Author's Note:**

> I know I've said many times that I'm a big believer in happy endings. It's just that sometimes, there isn't one.


End file.
